Four years on, trauma centre in Bijbehara far from ready

By Reader Correspondent on June 7, 2017Comments Off on Four years on, trauma centre in Bijbehara far from ready

Mohammad Suhail
Bijbehara: Four years after the foundation stone was laid and work was initiated on the Trauma Hospital in Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti’s home town, the facility is far from completion.
At the present pace of work, the hospital will take another two years to complete. Officials in health department agree that the pace of work is slow.
Construction on the trauma centre, undertaken by the Jammu and Kashmir Projects Construction Corporation Limited (JKPCC), started in 2013. The 13 crore rupees facility was aimed at reducing accident related deaths on Srinagar Jammu highway. However, four years down the line, what stands at the proposed site is two storey worth of concrete columns.
“The pace of work has been really slow. You can see for yourself, the facility is going to take at least four more years,” a shopkeeper in the vicinity remarked.
With PDP coming to power in 2014, residents of this town were hopeful that the hospital will be completed on a priority basis. “Dozens will die for want of proper medical care in the years the facility is going to become functional,” a local lamented.
Thirteen such hospitals were to be constructed along major roads in Kashmir valley to tackle accident related deaths, many of which, doctors say, can be prevented with proper trauma care facilities.
Jammu and Kashmir has an alarming rate of deaths due to road accidents. Over the last four years, period in which the Trauma hospital has been under construction, a total of 3564 people have lost their lives in road accidents in Jammu and Kashmir, most of them on this highway. The deaths occurred in 22,289 accidents recorded by the traffic department.
The JKPCC, however, are hopeful that the facility will be handed over to the health department by the end of this year. “December is the deadline we have put for the completion of the project. I am hopeful we will complete it by then,” Dileep Thusu, Managing Director of the JKPCC, told Kashmir Reader over phone.

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